NIGERIA,
A PERSONAL HISTORY
by Ian McCall

Dan
Hood was an international rugby player in his younger days. He would smile
deprecatingly if I introduced him as such and perhaps with good reason.
For his one and only international appearance was for Nigeria against
Dahomey in Cotonou. Dan recalls how different the accommodation was for
the French citizens. Their houses had fewer rooms and the team had to
be slept in the local income tax offices. These had no lavatories unside
the building and an abiding memory of the team was having to pee out of
upstairs windows; one or two of the accompanying ladies were reportedly
in agony by the morning which tells us that this minority were either
lacking in initiative or were weighed down by a modesty that far exceeded
awareness of the harmful effects of holding one’s water. A more
generous interpretation perhaps of their behaviour might have been that
they had a fear of heights.

How did this unlikely
match come to take place? The reason lies in the fact that in Lagos where
Dan worked there was quite a French community. The two countries had common
borders, the French territories of Dahomey, Niger, Chad and Cameroun entirely
surrounding the country. As the result of an agreement between the two
countries some 50 years before, each had the freedom to set up a commercial
representation in the other’s territories. This was not unusual
in West Africa. For example, the firm of John Holt (Liverpool) Ltd, long
established as traders on the coast but now operating in specialist areas
of business under different names, had trading operations for example
in Nkongsamba in what was the French Cameroons and where I once made an
unauthorised visit to see a friend. It all stemmed from this earlier agreement
between the two countries early in the 20th century that their traders
would have equal access to markets in the West African colonies and protectorates.

France and the French
people and language have always had an attraction for me. Our family has
always been francophile as have the vast majority of Scots. I was to be
delighted to go to a conference many years later organised by the Franco-Scottish
Society and graced by the presence of the French ambassador to the Court
of St James, to mark the 7th centenary of the Auld Alliance between the
two countries. When he addressed the Scots in Edinburgh in 1942 Charles
de Gaulle enthused: ‘No sooner has a Frenchman set foot in this
old and noble country than he detects a multitude of natural affinities
between your people and our own and he is aware of the thousands of vivid,
precious links in the Franco-Scottish alliance, the oldest in the world...’.
During the short reign of François II, husband of Mary Stuart,
the two kingdoms were in effect joined when all Scots in France and all
Frenchmen in Scotland were granted the same civic rights as the natives.

Two major French
trading companies were established in Lagos and they had very similar
names. One was the Société Commercial de l’Ouest Africain
(SCOA) and the other the Compagnie Française de l’Afrique
Occidentale (CFAO). Their expatriate employees were by the nature of their
work involved in the social exchanges that took place. The companies were
also represented in smaller stations and that was where it was impossible
to live a separate existence. Because the French presence was minute in
relation to the British presence, it was only to be expected that the
French adapted more quickly and readily to the British ways while retaining
their own unique culture. Like their British counterparts, many of the
French had experience of other parts of the world. They had been in places
like Algeria, Niger, Morocco, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Chad,
and spoke of places like Constantine, Ouagadougou, Tombouctou, Zinder
and Fort Lamy. They brought their own backgrounds and lifestyles with
them. We could often hear radio broadcasts from French territories on
my old thermionic valve Pye radio ‘Ici Brazzaville, poste national
français en Afrique équatoriale’. Often they were
crowded out on the airwaves by American missionaries from the deep south
who believed there was a colossal market for conversions in West Africa
and worked at it for all their sincere worth.

There is always a
rub-off from friends. We learnt respect for wine from the French in our
midst. They received their wine not in 70 centilitre bottles but in demijohns.
The French are not given to excesses like the British in the consumption
of alcohol but perhaps drink more steadily at a lower level of consumption.
My experience was that they allowed for two glasses per person at the
dinner table and felt no one needed more with a meal. One or two of the
young British newcomers were even known to chill their red wine until
the restrained horror on the faces of guests indicated something was amiss
or some other Brit with more savvy and taste would tactfully but firmly
indicate the error of their ways when they had a moment to themselves.
To dine at a French house was a different experience. To be exposed to
a couscous cooked to an authentic Algerian-French recipe is to have, certainly
for a young man not long out from the United Kingdom, a rewarding experience
- a bit like having your first nasi goreng in a Dutch household with East
Indian connections. I wonder as I write if people from other countries
coming to the United Kingdom enthuse over Indian curries as the locals
do over the very British invention of chicken tikka massala.

Many of the friendships
forged have lasted the lifetime of the people concerned. My cousin’s
widow, Sandy Murphy, herself an old coaster, was recently at the wedding
of a grandchild of French friends from their Nigerian days. As I key this
in she has arrangements in hand to be with them on the occasion of their
golden wedding. The world may have changed, probably for the better. Some
things are changeless like friendships forged in what was sometimes seen
as a crucible of adversity.

Apart from their
mighty influence on the English language, the French have long made a
contribution to the Scots tongue. The Scottish word Hogmanay denoting
the feast of the New Year and now used to describe the activities associated
with ‘seeing it in’, comes from the Old French aguillanneuf’
commonly used likewise to describe either the New Year or a New Year’s
gift. My paternal grandmother cut her meat with a gullie possibly derived
from ‘guillotine’ via the Scottish mercenaries who plied what
was then an honourable trade on the continent (French kings were protected
by their Garde Ecossaise for 133 years in recognition of the Scots’
help in assisting in the expulsion of the English from France). That meat
could have been a gigot straight from the French for a leg of mutton -
and still to be seen with that spelling on butchers’ boards from
Melrose to Mintlaw. It was normally carved on an ‘ashet’ (assiette)
which was a plate big enough to contain the leg of lamb. My great- grandfather
played the best in the land on his dambrod (draughtboard), from the French
word for draughts, and my grandmother would ‘pree’ something
at table (a word derived from Old French) if she wanted to try a small
piece. At school we would be encouraged to do something ‘at the
toot’ meaning ‘quickly’ from the French tout de suite;
Scots soldiers who fought in France in the First World War returned with
the expression `tout de suite and the tooter the sweeter`. There are enough
examples of the effect of French on Scots, as distinct from formal English,
to justify learned research if this has not yet been done.

The French influence
persisted in Nigeria in the custom of signing the Governor’s book
contained in a gatehouse at the entrance to Government House in Lagos.
It was signed when you arrived from leave or transfer into the territory
and again when you went on leave. It was expected that all government
officials would sign the book and those in other occupations had the unwritten
option to do so. As it did not appear to serve any particular purpose,
I surmise that it was a symbolic gesture of obeisance to the Queen through
the person of her senior representative in Nigeria. Those departing on
leave would enter their names and what they did where, concluding with
the letters ‘PPC’ meaning of course pour prendre congé
- to go on leave, literally to take a holiday. Foresters, agriculturists
and engineers did not usually possess the refinement of the French language
beyond school level - that was the province of those who had studied the
‘soft’ subjects - but they recognised the letters. They dubbed
it ‘the PPC book’ forgetting that these initials were for
departure only.